Youth Mobilities, Aspirations and Pathways
Advisory Board
Shanthi ROBERTSON
Shanthi ROBERTSON is the Executive Director of The Insight Centre, a research consultancy for social purpose and public interest organisations, and Adjunct Associate Professor and Principal Research Fellow at Western Sydney University. With 20 years’ experience across academic research and research consulting, she has worked with Commissions, government departments, advocacy organisations and universities, leading research for evidence-driven communications and advocacy, and working with culturally and linguistically diverse and First Nations communities. Her academic work has gained national and international recognition in migration, cultural diversity, youth studies and urban sociology. Shanthi was a former Chief Investigator and Partner Investigator on YMAP.
Rachel BROOKS
Rachel BROOKS is Professor of Higher Education at the University of Oxford, editor-in-chief of the British Journal of Sociology of Education, and co-editor of the ‘Research into Higher Education’ book series (published by Routledge). Rachel’s research focuses primarily on the sociology of higher education. Particular areas of expertise include international student mobility (and processes of internationalisation and Europeanisation in higher education more generally); student politics and protest; and ensuring equity in access to and outcomes within higher education. She has published 17 books, the most recent of which is Post-Brexit Student Mobilities (with Johanna Waters).
Francis COLLINS
Francis L. COLLINS is a Professor in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Auckland. His research encompasses a focus on the regulation and experiences of temporary migration, racism and workplace exploitation; international student mobilities; and the relationship between migration and cities. Francis has undertaken research in New Zealand, Australia, Singapore and South Korea. He is currently the Aotearoa New Zealand lead for an international research partnership examining temporary labour migration in the settler colonial contexts of Australia, Canada, the US and Aotearoa New Zealand. Francis is the co-author of Edges of Empire: The Politics of Immigration in Aotearoa New Zealand (Auckland University Press 2025) and author of Global Asian City: Migration, Desire and the Politics of Encounter in 21st Century Seoul (Wiley 2018). Co-edited volumes include Intersections of Inequality, Migration and Diversification (Palgrave 2020), Aspiration, Desire and the Drivers of Migration (Routledge 2020), Handbook of Transnationalism (Edward Elgar 2022) and Migration Studies and the Decolonial Challenge (Edward Elgar 2026)
Enzo COLOMBO
Enzo COLOMBO currently works at the Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan. Enzo does research in Qualitative Social Research, Social Theory and Sociological Theory. His most recent publication is 'Enchanted realism: Representations of self-fulfilment among Italian Youth after the pandemic.'
Russell KING
Russell KING is Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of Sussex, and former Director of the Sussex Centre for Migration Research. Between 2001 and 2013 he was the editor of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. Following his early interests in land tenure and agricultural geography, deriving from his PhD on the land reform of Southern Italy, Russell's research interests shifted to the study of migration, which he has been researching now for 40 years. He has directed major research projects on return migration to Southern Italy (funded by ESRC), Irish migration (Trinity Trust and the Bank of Ireland), British retirement migration to the Mediterranean (ESRC), Albanian migration (Leverhulme Trust), international student migration (HEFCE), second-generation return migration to Greece and Cyprus (AHRC) and New European Youth Mobilities (the EU Horizon 2020 ‘YMOBILITY’ project). He also headed the Sussex involvement in the EU Framework Six Network of Excellence on 'International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion in Europe' (IMISCOE), which is still ongoing as Europe’s major forum for migration research. His main regional interests are in Southern Europe and the Mediterranean, but he has also researched migration, as a global phenomenon, in other parts of the world. He is a strong believer in the value of collaborative, comparative and interdisciplinary research, and in the integration of qualitative and quantitative methods.
Valentina MAZZUCATO
Valentina MAZZUCATO is a Professor of Globalisation and Development at Maastricht University. Professor Mazzucato has recently completed a European Research Council Consolidator Grant funded project entitled ‘Mobility Trajectories of Young Lives: Transnational Youth in Global South and North (MO-TRAYL). In this project, she and her team investigated the relationship between youth’s history with physical mobility of all kinds to and from their or their parents’ country of origin, and their educational trajectories, psycho-social well-being and school-to-work transitions. In so doing, the team has drawn into question commonly used categories in migration research such as ‘first and second generation’ migrants. Professor Mazzucato specializes in studying migration from a transnational perspective in which contexts of origin and settlement are equally studied to understand how migrants shape their lives, their families and their societies. She collaborates with European and African universities in research projects that focus on transnational migration between Africa and Europe.​
Professor Mazzucato is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. She regularly gives keynote speeches in academic and policy-oriented events.
Brenda S.A YEOH
Brenda S.A. YEOH FBA is Distinguished Professor, Department of Geography, National University of Singapore (NUS) and Migration and Mobilities Cluster, Asia Research Institute, NUS. She was awarded the Vautrin Lud Prize for outstanding achievements in Geography in 2021 for her contributions to migration and transnationalism studies. Her research interests in Asian migrations span themes including social reproduction and care migration; skilled migration and cosmopolitanism; and marriage migrants and cultural politics. She has published widely on these topics and her recent books include Migration Studies and the Decolonial Challenge (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2026, with F. Collins and S.Y. Koh); Handbook of Gender and Mobilities (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2024 with V. Preston, S. McLafferty and M. Maciejewska); The Question of Skill in Cross Border Mobilities (Routledge, 2023 with G. Liu-Farrer and M. Baas); Handbook of Migration and the Family (Edward Elgar, 2023 with J. Waters); and Handbook of Transnationalism (Edward Elgar, 2022 with F.L. Collins).
MAJELLA KILKEY
Professor Majella KILKEY is a Professor of Social Policy, University of Sheffield, where she co-founded the Migration Research Group. She researches at the intersection of migration and family studies, focusing particularly on issues of care, life course, transnationality, gender, masculinities, ageing, coloniality and racism. Majella is author of three books and numerous articles and research reports, and recipient of a number of conference and research awards, including from the Economic and Social Research Council and the European Commission. She is currently Co-I in the ESRC-funded Centre for Care, in which she leads the Care Trajectories and Constraints Research Group.
BINOD KHADRIA
A writer, editor and commentator, Professor Binod KHADRIA is currently the President of the think tank Global Research Forum on Diaspora and Transnationalism (GRFDT). He is a former professor of economics, education and international migration, and Chairperson of the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. In 2017-18, he held the MEA’s inaugural ICCR Professorial Chair at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, USA.
Dr. Khadria earned his BA Econ Hons from Cotton College and PhD from JNU. He has been a Visiting Fellow at University of Sussex, National University of Singapore, a Times Fellow at Teen Murti House, Asia Scholar at University of Melbourne, a Fulbright Scholar at Boston University, and a visiting professor at several other leading universities abroad. In 2023, Professor Khadria was appointed a Scholar of Excellence at Toronto Metropolitan University, and in 2024 an affiliated Fellow at the Institute for the Study of International Migration in Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, Washington DC. He held the position of Co-Convener of Metropolis Asia-Pacific from 2016 to 2025.
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His publications include The Migration of Knowledge Workers (Sage 1999), two volumes of India Migration Report(Cambridge University Press 2009; 2012), Indian Skilled Migration and Development: To Europe and Back (Springer 2014). In addition to scholarly journals and edited volumes, his research papers have been published by the ILO, IOM, OECD, GCIM, IRD-France, IDE-Japan, Harvard International Review, and the Encyclopedia of the Indian Diaspora. Apart from sitting on the editorial and advisory boards of leading migration journals, he is the Co-editor of IOM’s World Migration Report 2020 (UN-Migration, Geneva), Sage Handbook of International Migration (London 2019), the forthcoming Handbook of Migration in Asia (Edward Elgar, 2026 in press) and special issues of Asian and Pacific Migration Journal (2022), International Migration Journal (2019), and Asian Population Studies (2007).
A member of the International Steering Committee of Metropolis International and the IOM’s Migration Research Leaders Syndicate, Professor Khadria served as the Thematic Expert at the second UN General Assembly consultative debate among Member States leading to the signing of Global Compact for Migration (GCM) Agreement in 2018. In 2023, he was invited to deliver the Inaugural Keynote Address at the 20th IMISCOE Annual Conference on “Migration and Inequalities” at Warsaw, Poland. In February 2025, he gave the Closing Keynote at the 3rd Biennial Congress on “Shared Futures in North America” at UNAM, Mexico City; and in March 2025, the Closing Remarks at the Fourth edition of IOM’s Global Diaspora Virtual Exchange on Climate Action, mandated by the Global Diaspora Policy Alliance (GDPA). Following his contribution at the International Political Economy of Labour Migration Conference at the University Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany on July 18-20, 2024, he was invited to make a keynote presentation at the 5th International Sociological Association (ISA) Forum at Rabat, Morocco in July 2025. In September 2025, he represented the GRFDT at the 15th Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) at Riohacha, Colombia.
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In 2023, the former graduate students and colleagues of Professor Khadria brought out a Festschrift in his honour, titled, Development Outlook of Education and Migration: An Indian Perspective, published by Springer Nature.
